This course offers you basic but valuable techniques used by a good translator in the translation between English and Chinese. We’ll discuss what is translation, what is good translation, and learn about how to produce good translations.
All the examples used in this course are taken from the course instructor's own translations of various genres and topics of writing. These examples are elaborated on to show you how to understand the idea, style and tone of the writer, the historical and cultural context of the writing, as well as the explicit and implied meanings of words, the grammatical structures of sentences, and the logic of sentences and paragraphs in order to achieve faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance in the translation.
After completing this course, you will know what makes a qualified professional translator and acquire the abilities and skills that such a translator needs

Taught By

Yuan Yao

Transcript

[MUSIC] The fourth step in translation is look for appropriate expressions in the target language. We cannot separate the third step, understanding word meaning, from the fourth step, looking for appropriate expressions. Expressions gradually form as we read the source language text, look up the words, analyze the grammar and the logic. However, this process does not necessarily lead to appropriate expressions. When we write down our translation, we need to remember there are differences in the English culture and the Chinese culture. The English readers and the Chinese readers, they make different associations with the same words, that the same idea may be expressed differently in English and in Chinese. In this lesson, we'll look at a few factors that we should consider when we try to decide what is the appropriate expression, and a few techniques that we can use to help us with the expression. [MUSIC] Culture difference, let me give you two examples. The first example, the English word uncle can be translated into [FOREIGN]. Sometimes, we have to read a whole story very closely before we can find out which Chinese word we should use to translate this one English word. In a Chinese culture, blood relationship is very important. That's why we need different words to tell whether the relative is from the father's family, that is [FOREIGN], or the mother's family, that is [FOREIGN], or, is a member of the family by marriage, that is [FOREIGN]. Within the father's family, we need different words to tell whether this man is older than the father, [FOREIGN], or younger than the father, [FOREIGN], because seniority is important. In English culture however, it does not seem necessary to tell the difference, so [FOREIGN] they are all uncles. There are also Chinese words that have more than one equivalent word in English, for example, the year 2015 is [FOREIGN]. There are three versions of English translation of [FOREIGN]. Year of the goat, year of the sheep, year of the ram, which is the correct translation? At the beginning of 2015, BBC reported hundreds of millions of Chinese people are traveling home to spend the Lunar new year holiday with their families in the world's biggest annual migration. But while it is farewell to the Year of the Horse, confusion abounds as to whether the coming year is dedicated to the sheep, ram, or goat. Let's watch a video. [MUSIC] >> One, two three, [SOUND]. >> As translators, we should have the cultural awareness when we look for appropriate expressions in a target language. [MUSIC] Differences in collocation, in doing translation we should also be aware of the differences in collocation in English and in Chinese. In Chinese, for example, the verb [FOREIGN] goes with many nouns, so that we can form phrases, such as [FOREIGN] and so on. In English however, no verb can be used together with all these nouns. The phrases we looked at just now can be translated into, open the door, drive the car, turn on the light, keep a shop, hold a meeting, make a list, write a check. Similarly, in English we can say, for example, answer the question, answer the letter, answer the door, answer the phone, answer the needs, answer criticism. We cannot find one Chinese word, however, that is equivalent to the word answer in all these phrases. This should be translated into [FOREIGN]. [MUSIC] Differences in word usage, certain words, such as abstract nouns, pronouns, and verbs, are used differently in the two languages. We should be aware of these two. Let's look at a few examples of the translation of abstract nouns and pronouns. [MUSIC] Abstract nouns in English can be used to tell the specific qualities, characteristics, status of people or things. The specific nature, status, characteristics of behaviors or the specific process and degree of actions and a time and place at which actions happen. For example, in this English sentence, short verses in the frescoes spoke of love in all its confusions and brokenness. Both confusion and brokenness are abstract nouns. It's not difficult to translate confusion, which means [FOREIGN], but how do we translate brokenness? Is it [FOREIGN]? In the sentence, the two words describe two characteristics of love. So, we can translate the sentence into [FOREIGN], instead of translating into [FOREIGN], which sounds very odd. [MUSIC] There are three types of pronouns in Chinese, personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and interrogative pronouns. In English, there are eight types of pronouns, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, self pronouns, reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, interrogative pronouns, relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns. Not every English pronoun, therefore, can find an equivalent pronoun in Chinese. What adds to the difficulty is that these pronouns are used differently in the two languages. In English, for example, we say please hand in your homework. But in Chinese we don't say [FOREIGN]. Instead, we say [FOREIGN]. Your is omitted in the translation. Though grammatically it's not incorrect to say [FOREIGN], we just don't say so in Chinese. [MUSIC] There are no self pronouns in Chinese. So those in English can be translated into [FOREIGN] or not translated. For example, take good care of yourself can be translated into [FOREIGN]. She herself is a doctor can be translated into [FOREIGN]. He hid himself can be translated into [FOREIGN]. In this case, himself is not translated. [MUSIC] Chinese personal pronouns have different genders only in the third person that is [FOREIGN] and [FOREIGN] and [FOREIGN]. English personal pronouns have different genders, such as he and she, have plural form and singular form, such as I and we, and have nominative, objective, and possessive cases, such as they, them, their, and theirs. In the following sentences, we find the same pronoun, [FOREIGN]. The same word [FOREIGN] is translated into different pronouns in English. We are good friends. They drove us to the airport. They are our neighbours. [MUSIC] There are techniques that can help us with our expressions, such as affirmation and negation, addition and omission, changing the word order, combining and splitting sentences, etc. We're going to learn and practice these techniques in the future lessons. In this lesson, we'll only look at a few examples, so that we have a general idea of what these are. [MUSIC] Let's read this sentence. Before daybreak the men were working and they finished at six. We can translate the sentence into [FOREIGN], or we can translate it into [FOREIGN]. There is a slight difference between the translations of the word before [FOREIGN] and [FOREIGN]. They are the same in meaning, but different in tones. Both mean it's early in the morning, but [FOREIGN] emphasizes this fact and makes reader feel more strongly about it. This is English sentence, with all his achievements he remains modest and prudent. This is the Chinese translation, [FOREIGN]. In the Chinese translation, [FOREIGN] and [FOREIGN] are added to explicitly express the adversative relation that is implied in English sentence [MUSIC] This is the English sentence, you can never tell. This is the Chinese translation, [FOREIGN]. In the Chinese translation, the word you is omitted. In the following lessons, we'll discuss other techniques as well. The last step is revising and polishing. I suggest that you put aside your translation for some time before you revise it. [MUSIC] What do we revise? Revise the content, fine-tune the choice of words, make sure the terms and names are consistent. Revise the language, make sure the language flows. Revise mechanics, make sure the spelling and punctuations are accurate. After all these steps are completed, we can submit our translation. [MUSIC]

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